


Remain but a little in this place

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [49]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Awkward Alistair (Dragon Age), Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Meet the Family, bringing the boyfriend home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-03 05:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21174467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: Caitwyn Tabris isnotbringing her boyfriend home to meet the family.  She's not.  But she still hopes her family likes him, for no particular reason.Includes Papa Tabris POV!Note:This series is fully drafted!  We're actually really close to the end guys!  Just a bit more Denerim stuff, then we rocket into the Landsmeet and the final fight.  No big deal, just you know, some of the most angsty choices ahead.  ;)





	Remain but a little in this place

Alistair wasn’t sure if he could fit in the house.

The homes were all clapboard and rickety, and if the door Caitwyn helped her father through was perhaps a little sturdier than the others, it wasn’t by much. Zevran had already taken himself away, pleading the need to wash after dealing with a blood mage, and Morrigan had promised to brew some concoction for Cait’s father. So now he was just standing there by himself while the elves of the Alienage gave him sidelong glances.

A bubble of tension burst in his chest when Cait slipped back out. 

“What’re you standing around like a lump for?”

“I, uh, didn’t know if I was invited or not.”

Boots scuffed in the dirt, though he didn’t think too hard about what else were ground into these streets. Children in threadbare clothes cautiously flitted from house to house, alley to alley, and the braver among them pointed and whispered. Cait was about to say something when she noticed the children and shouted as if by reflex.

“Go on and hie to your mamas, you lot of trouble!” she called out, her lilt reappearing in full force. He could barely understand her. The children, all small and thin and fox-faced, dashed away barefoot with wild, untamed laughter. Was he looking at Cait’s past? Running around with not enough to eat or clothes that were too big or too small, but always able to run  _ home _ ?

“Alistair?” Her lilt softened, like she put it away. That wasn’t right either.

“You don’t have to slow down to talk to me,” he blurted out. Heat ran up the back of his neck and through his ears as he just watched him, studying him like she wasn’t sure how she ended up with a man who floundered and fumbled his way though—

Her fingers threaded through his and she squeezed. “You’re invited,” she said, lilt somewhere halfway between normal and what he’d grown used to hearing. “Now come on, promised Papa I’d introduce you.”

“You did?” His voice rose and almost cracked on the question. This was bad. Very bad. Cait’s  _ father _ . Her  _ father _ . Cait, the man’s precious, only daughter. And  _ him _ , a giant, clomping human in their small home. No, bad idea. Very bad idea. “But  _ why _ ? I’m no one special.”

“If you haven’t noticed, you’re rather special to  _ me _ . Now, you going to come inside and meet my father proper like, or are you going to stand out here and be awkward?”

“You say that like I won’t be awkward inside.”

“Alistair,” she said shortly. “Get inside.”

* * *

No sooner than she had gotten Alistair inside, Shianni was dragging her out again. Alistair turned large, fearful eyes on her, to the point where she’d thought he was taking lessons from her dog. 

But Shianni’s hand was firm on Caitwyn’s elbow, and there was no escaping the fact that the stores were in sore need of replacing. The least she could do was use some of her hard won coin to restock the family larder. Better than restock, Caitwyn promised herself. She was a Warden and the money she’d bartered and traded and bled for was  _ hers _ . And she could take care of her family now. 

Her father would never have to work a day again in his life. She could see to that for certain.

The district gate open, Caitwyn and Shianni crossed the river and emerged at the market. Stalls had less than the usual spring bounty on offer. Peaky greens and wrinkle-skinned apples, but she’d spent years haggling down to the last bent penny. It all came back like she hadn’t spent a year away.

Once the baskets were full, Caitwyn turned towards the Alienage but her step slowed as they reached the edge of the market. The Alienage, not home. 

A frown furrowed her brows, which prompted Shianni to nudge her hip. “Bit late to be worried about whatever Uncle Cyrion’s saying to that man of yours.”

“What? No that’s not what I was—what do you mean ‘man of mine’? Never said anything.” Warmth bloomed in her cheeks, but she held Shianni’s smirking gaze. She’d endured worse from her friends. 

“Oh, didn't you? Him getting all upset about you having a wedding? You actually explaining something to  _ anyone _ . Let alone one of  _ their _ men.”

“We’ve been through a lot together.”

“You said you wanted Uncle Cyrion to meet him!”

“We’re fellow Wardens!”

Shianni’s smirk dimmed and she put on a show of sympathy. “And, let’s be honest now cousin, lovers.”

The heat spread to her ears, her neck. Maker take it, she was all over too warm. “I never  _ said _ anything,” she hissed, gripping her basket handle tightly. 

They were in the middle of the bridge, and even if foot traffic wasn’t at its usual press they were far from alone. And arguing in the street like a pair of angry wives bickering over some slight.

“Oh Cait,” Shianni sighed. Shifting her basket to her free hand, Shianni looped one arm through Cait’s and pressed cheek to cheek. “If you’re happy, I’m happy for you, but it was more of a shock to see you with  _ anyone _ than back from the dead.”

“I’m never going to hear the end of this am I?” Caitwyn eyed Shianni warily, but they continued over the bridge arm in arm. 

“Oh, no. Considering you never so much as  _ looked _ anyone like that before now, not boys, not girls, not a single soul. Ha! I have a lot of saved up teasing for you.” Shianni patted her cousin’s hand as if she meant to be conciliatory. Caitwyn found it less than comforting, but soon they were in sight of the home they’d grown up in, the door in need of some repair but still solid enough to keep out another winter or two.

“You remember what Mama used to tell us?” she asked as she stopped in the middle of the street. Shianni snorted.

“Aunty Adaia told us a lot of things. What in particular?”

Caitwyn picked at the woven threads of the basket, her gaze tracking across the Alienage. The clapboard houses, the rickety festival stage, and the Vhenadahl standing tall and proud as her people did not. As she had not. “ _ Hope for a gentle man _ .”

Small songbirds flitted between the branches of the Vhenadahl, a nest or two nestled in crooks and crannies. The walls of the Alienage were high, but over the top of them loomed the palace district and Fort Drakon. Places so far removed from her childhood home as to be another country. Yet she had defeated the later and was bracing to face the former. And the terrible possibility they might make her gentle, unserious man a king.

“If anyone deserved a gentle man, Cait,” Shianni said quietly. Caitwyn eyed her cousin and a retributive smirk flashed across her face.

“I’d say the same of you, though we both know that’s not your cuppa. Maybe I’ll introduce you to Leliana after all this is over if you’re nice. She’s Orlesian.”

“Caitwyn Tabris!” Shianni cried. “You know an Orleisan woman and you didn’t bring her here for me? Maker’s mercy, you’re cruel.”

“Play nice, and I’ll bring her around.”

“Ooooh, you are still the same, Cait. Still the same, you bossy, high-handed, ugh!  _ Fine _ . You win.”

“Thank you. I do like winning.” Caitwyn pinched Shianni’s cheek and then opened the door.

* * *

Alistair shifted on the too-small chair. Everything in the house was too small for him. Or, more accurately, he was too big for everything in the house. It was all built to elven scale, and it made him feel like he’d knock something over with his elbow just by turning about.

“So, Alistair,” Cyrion began. Soris poured tea, the color thin and weak, but then he wasn’t much of a tea aficionado. Leliana would probably be able to set Caitwyn’s father and cousin at ease and charm them with polite conversation. Zevran would be himself, and for some reason people found that pleasant to be around. Wynne would find common ground with Cyrion somehow, and even Morrigan had already interacted with Caitwyn’s family without a single ruffled feather among them. If Alistair only ranked higher in social graces than Sten, Shale and Oghren, he had no hope of making a good impression.

Even the  _ dog _ was doing better. Lying belly up beside Cait’s father, Maethor received pats and scratches with obvious delight.

“Cait said you two escaped Ostagar together. That must have been a terrible day.”

“Um, yes?” His voice rose, not sure how to respond, but he cleared his throat and ducked his head. “I mean, yes, ser. It was, it was a hard day for us both.”

“But you saved her?” Soris asked. Soris of the  _ you-wear-your-hair-like-my-cousin-Soris _ . Should he thank Soris for that?  _ Oh, by the way, Cait cut my hair because she used to cut your hair and ha, wasn’t that a moment she and I had _ . No, probably not the thing to say just yet. Or ever.

“Weeeeell, truth to tell that was Morrigan’s mother, but ah, we were both a bit woozy. Was a bit of blood loss there.”

Cyrion blanched.

“No! She was fine! Well, she was hurt, but I wasn’t going to let the darkspawn take her.” The older elf’s pale features grew paler. Soris glowered, and Alistair shut his mouth with an audible click of his jaw and rounded his shoulders forward. 

The teacup, its pattern faded but with its rim still intact after how many years of use, clinked softly as Cyrion set it in the saucer. “But you were there for her? You were always there, helping my little girl?”

Alistair met Cyrion’s green eyes. Cait had her father’s eyes. Her mother’s looks, but her father’s eyes. His were just as bright, for all his years. 

“Yes, ser. I—I did my best.” A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “As best as she would let me, at times.”

Soris laughed. “Yeah, that’s Cait alright.”

“Indeed,” Cyrion said softly. “Bound and determined to take everything on herself. Just like her mother. Well, son, I’m grateful that she has you. So very, very grateful. And I know you’ll bring her back to me again, when all this is over.” Cyrion laid a hand on Alistair’s shoulder and gripped tight. There was more strength in those hands than Alistair would have guessed. A lump formed in his throat, and Alistair ducked his head to avoid the earnest and thankful gaze of a father.

“Cait, Cait’s important,” he mumbled. “She’s done all the work, all the planning. I just hit the darkspawn.”

“Don’t feel bad, Alistair,” Soris drawled. “Cait bossed us all around when we were little. You were just next in line. There was this one time—”

The door swung open, and Caitwyn stood there with the afternoon sun behind her, a basket of food held securely before her. “Papa, I don’t suppose you could make pie for supper? Been missing them, and I told Alistair you make the best there is.”

Cyrion smiled like a man given a new lease of life. “Nothing would make me happier, Firebug. Nothing in the whole world.”

Caitwyn’s smile was beatific, and Alistair’s heart skipped a beat. In a little clapboard house, Alistair was suddenly the happiest he’d ever been in his whole life. Whatever life in the Wardens would be like after the Blight, he wondered if he could find a place for something like this. 

* * *

“And then! And then she stared this shem boy dead in the eye and slowly.” Soris raised his middle finger in a rude gesture and grinned at Alistair over the dinner table. Alistair regarded Caitwyn with open amusement. She glanced away, arms crossed, refusing to rise to this bait. Somehow, with Alistair at the table for dinner, every story suddenly had  _ her _ cast as some scamp one step ahead of trouble. Which was unfair and untrue.

“And then, she said, you won’t believe what she said. We were only eight! I didn’t even know those words, and she said—” 

“I think we can get a fair idea of what she said, Soris,” Papa said calmly. Soris huffed and collapsed back into his seat, but waggled his eyebrows at Alistair. Both men filled in the blanks and poorly concealed sniggers and grins behind their hands. “Though,” her father continued, “I feel as though I’m getting retroactive grey hairs from these stories.”

Caitwyn sunk further against her chair.

“Uncle.” Shianni’s tone was ingratiating, and she leaned over in her chair to lay a fond hand on Papa’s shoulder. “You aren’t mad at us are you? It was such a long time ago.” She threw in falsely worried eyes as well, and Caitwyn wondered when Shianni had become so adept at playing things up like that.

While she’d been gone was the answer Caitwyn didn’t want to think about.

“No, Shianni. And you know that. I’m just a little shocked that there was so much I didn’t know about.” Caitwyn shifted in her seat at her father’s wistful tone. But he offered her a smile all the same, and she gripped his thin fingers in her own. What a gift it was, for both of them, for all of them, to still have each other. His fingers curled around hers and a pocket of quiet expanded from the center of the house.

“Dinner was great!” Alistair blurted into the silence. 

Caitwyn laughed, and, before she could think about it, stroked her thumb across his chin. “I love you, you daft, awkward man.”

The weight of  _ three _ pairs of eyes suddenly settled on her, and Caitwyn fervently wished for the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She’d just  _ admitted _ in front of her family that. Alistair wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, his cheek resting on the top of her head.

“I love you too, you bossy, rude gesture giving woman.” She offered a token wiggle of protest, but then resigned herself to her fate of having her whole family witness this. Cautiously, she risked a glance to find Shianni smug, Soris caught between amusement and wistfulness—Valora hadn’t been among those she’d freed, and Caitywn wished she could have saved her cousin that hurt—but Papa. In Papa’s eyes was pride and relief and the sure and steady love she’d known her whole life. 

Then he sighed.

“Love is well and good, however, if you’re to stay under my roof tonight, you’ll sleep in different rooms.”

Caitwyn promptly buried her face against Alistair’s chest, refusing to let her cousins so much as catch a hint of a blush.

* * *

Cyrion leaned back in his chair by the fire, all the children sleeping. Or at least in their separate beds. Very separate. He’d made sure of that. The sight of the lad—Alistair—curled up on the narrow cot next to Soris’s bed in the attic would amuse him for a good many years, Cyrion knew. 

Ah yes, his daughter had certainly done something entirely unexpected.

Gazing into the fire, he thought back to two years ago, when he had first begun searching for a husband for Caitwyn. She had always been special, and that was not only paternal pride talking. Clever, brilliant even, she had picked up reading and sums faster than he or Adaia could teach her, and when they had run out of things to teach, she had taken herself to the streets to run wild like all the other children.

It was not as if he could have stopped her; he had to work.

He had written to every Alienage in Ferelden, and as far away as Starkhaven in the Free Marches. What he had required was simple and yet rarer than jewels: a gentle man. A man who would never sit sullen at a late dinner, or strike a woman for a quick tongue. A man of even temper and good nature. A man who would know his little firebug for the treasure she was. 

Adaia had called her shadow, but Cyrion had always seen a spark in her. A flicker of something that, if allowed to grow, could be something wondrous.

That spark had been nearly snuffed out when she had been but thirteen. His wife had never said a word, but he had seen the change in his daughter. Seen it clearly and grieved silently; Caitwyn had never told him anything and he would never broach his daughter’s silence if that was her wish. Only thirteen and his bright, brilliant, beautiful daughter had turned in on herself, twisted herself tighter when her mother died, and had been so withdrawn after her failed wedding that Cyrion feared he had lost her in more ways than one.

But tonight, tonight she had been radiant.

When Neralos had arrived, Cyrion had congratulated himself on his choice. Handsome and tall for their people, with a demeanor so earnest and gentle that he knew his daughter would never know a hand raised in anger. Yet she had been struck on her wedding day all the same, and though Neralos had gone to rescue her he had not been able to stop her or Shianni from being hurt.

How different would that day have been if Cyrion had asked for a gentle man who could also defend his family?

And impossible thing to ask for, among their people. Those elves who knew how to fight did not seek marriages in the Alienage. They were aloof Dalish or mercenaries or worse. Yet, he could not help but contemplate what would have happened if he had searched a little longer, taken a little more time to find a man who was all that his daughter truly deserved.

A man like Alistair.

Cyrion hummed thoughtfully to himself and took another sip of tea. The door to Shianni’s room creaked open and he glanced around as Caitwyn emerged on silent feet. Her wince made him smile. “Forget about the door’s hinges, did you Firebug?”

“Papa!” She gripped her shirt tightly in her hands, but composed herself quickly. “What’re you still doing up?”

“Oh, I don’t sleep much these days. And I do have all this lovely new tea to drink with fresh lemons and honey to put in it.”

“Still, Papa, you should be getting your rest.”

“Don’t fret, so. That dark haired friend of yours, she said the tincture would do its own work no matter what I did.” 

Her lips thinned. How like her mother she was sometimes. So alike it was sometimes as if a ghost lingered in the house. “Doesn’t mean you don’t need rest for other reasons.”

“Very well, I’ll go to bed soon. What about you, Firebug? You wouldn’t be sneaking out, would you?” He couldn’t resist teasing her, just a little. She flushed, her dark cheeks reflecting more than the heat of the fire. 

“No,” she said, almost sullen like a normal girl of her age. But then, she had never been like other girls of her age. She picked an imaginary speck of dust off her overlarge, soft sleeping pants and wrapped her arms around herself. Her nightshirt was a man’s linen shirt, and he had a fair guess who she had stolen it from. Though, it was likely the lad didn’t think of it as stolen. “Papa, can I ask you a question?”

He gestured at the other much-mended chair with his tea cup. “Always.”

She sat, legs held to her chest and bare feet perched on the end of the chair. As his daughter watched the flames dance, he watched her struggle to speak from her heart. He knew it was not that she struggled to feel, but that she struggled to give voice to what resided in a heart with the depth of the ocean. She puffed out a breath, diving headfirst into what she wanted to say. “What do you? I mean, do you think? Do you like Alistair?”

“Does it matter if I like him or not? Or even approve?”

“Yes? No. I don’t know. Papa, just tell me if—”

“He adores you, Firebug. A blind man could see that. More, he makes you happy and treats you well. There is little more a father could ask.” He took another sip of tea, savoring the tartness of the lemon and the dollop of honey he had rationed into it. “Though,” he said thoughtfully, “grandchildren would be nice. Maybe living closer, too.”

“Papa,” she sighed, exasperation at him winning out over any pretense of composure. It only made him smile more.

“Hm, since you must know: I do like him. He’s not quite what I imagined for you, and I don’t mean that he’s human. He’s rather odd.”

“He  _ is _ odd. But he makes me laugh. Even when there’s nothing to laugh about. He makes the world lighter.”

“Then that’s all that matters. Not what I think, not what anyone else thinks. All I ever wanted was to see you happy, Cait. I’m proud of all you’ve done as a Warden, but I’m also proud of what you’ve done for yourself.”

He nearly lost his hold on his teacup when she flung herself at him, holding him tight. Twisting about, he managed to set the cup down and hold his daughter, almost like he had when she’d been small. He rubbed circles across her back, and the tightness across her shoulders bled away. “Oh my little firebug. I love you so much.”

And he knew she would come back to him again. When the time came, and Caitwyn’s life hung in the balance once more, Cyrion knew Alistair would not be found wanting.


End file.
